Microsoft's official "Bing Wallpaper app" does some nasty, malware-like things to Windows
Microsoft's official "Bing Wallpaper app" does some nasty, malware-like things to Windows
The app automatically installs Bing Visual Search and includes code to decrypt cookies saved in other browsers, Rivera said, and it also brings a "free" geolocation web API to the system.
The developer discovered "many" nasty tricks Microsoft integrated in Bing Wallpapers, which include trying to change the browser's settings and set Edge as the default system browser. If the default browser isn't Edge, the app will open the default browser after some time asking to enable the previously installed Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome extension.
They are trying so hard to push everybody to linux. The only thing that has kept me using windows is game development tool chains, but even that isn't gonna be enough to keep me on windows much longer.
The Godot Engine is getting better every day.
If you're already using a third party engine it shouldn't be as big of a deal jumping to Linux. But if you're doing engine development, the tools on Windows are still superior. There's a big reason why Direct3D is still so popular despite being constrained to only Xbox and Windows. Tooling and documentation for Vulkan and OpenGL are light years behind and it's frustrating to see how vast the differences are as someone who primarily works with Vulkan/OpenGL and haa dabbled with Direct3D as a hobby.
If only flight sims and peripherals worked on Linux It’s been the one think keeping me back.
Dual boot and encrypt your Linux drives so windows can't access them, or run windows in an isolated VM. Only use Windows when you absolutely need to and use Linux for everything else.
That's the best way to get yourself used to it. I did that with PC gaming. All my servers, my personal laptop, and my personal desktop all run Linux and just the personal desktop has windows dual boot. Now many games run on Linux, so I don't even boot Windows. It's been like a year or more since I last touched Windows outside of my work laptop.
And with KDE Plasma desktop, even my non-tech-savy partner had no problem switching. Fedora has a Plasma district that works really well for me.
I left a long time ago while they would entertain my classmates of new features I had been using for 4 years. Everyone thought I was embarrassed when the MS rep told me they had to look at legal consequences before adding features that could be patented by others when I asked why they hadn't added a menu of WiFi access points, yet I sat there wondering how our open source community built so much and took care of each other in collaboration. I understood they had to be careful to not get sued, but they also thrived in that world for competition rather than selling services.
This doesn’t sound “malware-like”. It sounds like just plain malware.
Or just plain Microsoft.
Microsoft produces malware, that's nothing new.
at least malware is free
"Free as in freedom?"
"Free as in free data for Microsoft to harvest."
Haven't we already categorized windows as malware and Microsoft as a malware company? We really shouldn't be surprised that they put out another piece of malware. It's their MO.
I’m not a windows fan boy, in fact I haven’t used one in years, and have no intentions to.
But this is a weird way of thinking about MS shenanigans.
- Hate it or like it, windows update is still an update to your system, to fix security vulnerabilities even. I wish they had implemented it in a user friendly way. But it is NOT a thing that disrupts you with ill intent as you mentioned here.
- That is a task manager running some process. But no indication on what the process is !
- Enabled by default is an horrible design decision no matter who does it. I agree on that. But this is NOT unauthorised access. You signed up for it when you decided to use windows.
Again I don’t like MS. Hate them for their bad decisions, but don’t hate them by misrepresenting them.
(My comment is only about this screenshot posted here)
Why would you download bing wallpaper app anyways? First rule of computers: only install from trusted sources
Most average users consider Microsoft a trusted source, that's the root cause of a whole lot of crap.
Most average users consider Microsoft a trusted source, that’s the root cause of a whole lot of crap.
I remember when I installed SP3 for XP... On my AMD machine.
Lack of trust in Microsoft started on that fateful day.
"Megacorp learned nothing from Active Desktop being an utter fucking security disaster." Yeah, no shit. Everything old is new again.
Active Desktop was entirely ahead of its time. Let's not forget that it was only around a decade later that JIT-compiled JavaScript engines like V8 paved the way for web apps, including the iPhone which at launch only supported third-party apps as web apps.
Why do people need an app for wallpapers? Just find some nice photos on Flickr, DeviantArt, whatever, save them all to a folder, and configure the OS to change it once per week.
Reminds me of the "free smileys" and "free mouse cursors" apps from the 2000s. I thought we had evolved past that.
How do you save a picture? Where is Downloads? How do you apply a saved picture as a wallpaper?
These are confusing questions to boomers and Gen Z.
Why not have a simple app which "automatically" does all the hard work (just in exchange of a little of your data)?
As a "boomer" myself, I do know the secret of the 'right click: Save as'. Who do you think thought up the idea-- that's right, a Boomer. And we taught Gen X about it. Not my fault they didn't pass on the ancient and now arcane knowledge to future generations. But I suppose you need to know how to use a mouse before you can right click anything. Having attempted to teach 3D CAD to high school students, my first job was to show them how to use a mouse and why fingers and CAD don't mix. And do it before we could actually move on to the subject matter they were supposed to be learning.
Still I do use an app for rotate my backgrounds and quotes. The app Variety works well with KDE Plasma with a large selection of repositories to choose from with beautiful backgrounds without taking up extra space on my drives. But what do I know, I'm just a boomer.
I do enjoy all the NASA photos and National Geographic backgrounds served up to me on a rotating basis without needing to take up local storage space to do so. But I ain't running Windows either.
I'm always surprised at how devious this windows spyware is. 99% of people would probably just accept to share all their data but that's not good enough; MS has to try and squeeze out every last drop.
A wallpaper app is already targeting the most vulnerable. Nobody who knows how to remove the spyware that's already in Windows is installing a wallpaper app.
Every time I see stuff like this it makes me slightly glad they got laughed out of the smart phone game. Can you imagine if a Microsoft mobile OS became a serious third between Android and iOS? I mean, those two aren't great by any stretch of the imagination (and are probably doing or planning similar shit), but Microsoft is just going gloves off at this point.
If there was more competition they (probably) wouldn't be doing this stuff as people would leave.
I was actually a fan of Outlook for Android. Followed system dark mode before it was cool, had real multi account inbox, good wearos app, and other useful features. Then they started inserting Bing search into my long press menu system wide. And also recommending Edge when I clicked links. This kind of horizontal integration is just too baked into the company DNA. They can't help themselves, even when it actually harms them
Yeah. On my work desktop, our IT people have told us to not use the Outlook program but rather to just go to the website. On my phone, I run it in Vivaldi instead of the app (which is a little jankie, but not as bad as it was running in Chrome or Firefox).
Time to break up Microsoft
Best time was a decade ago. Second best time is now. Same with Google, and Apple, auto companies and grocery companies. And...and...and. it's almost as the free market DOESN'T solve issues it creates them.
Oh, free markets can solve these problems, but we don't have a free market. These big companies don't win because they're the best, they win because they buy the marketshare bribe companies to only support their platforms.
ISPs are a fantastic example here. Starting a new ISP is prohibitively expensive, not because of the physical materials you need, but the permits (which the ISPs lobbied for) and lawsuits w/ existing ISPs. In a proper free market, we'd have a lot more selection than we do.
What you call "free market" I call "crony-capitalism." In a free market, monopolies only stay monopolies if they continue to be better than the alternatives. In a crony-capitalist market, monopolies continue if they can make enough barriers to prevent competition.
While scummy indeed, if you need a desktop application to get yourself new wallpapers, my sympathy only goes so far.
Also not at all surprised the top comment speaks of Linux.
Linux, hating Musk, and Star Trek: the Lemmy trifecta.
You only have sympathy for people who are already technically competent to some standard you've chosen? It's those who don't have technical competence that this shit works on. I'd bet that's the reason a wallpaper app was chosen for these shenanigans, because it filters out the people who will be wise to it.
Like it or not, building a secure internet means making systems that are safe for regular internet users, and if you're getting snooty about the kinds of programs a person installs, I'd wager that's not you. Even if it's just the least competent 5 or 10% of the internet falling prey to this, it's the predators that make the environment more dangerous for everyone. Put the blame where it belongs.
Also, those people aren't using Linux partly because Linux is an elitist community that shits on anyone who's not comfortable in the command line. If you want Linux to be a viable threat to the Windows monopoly, you need to accept that these people will need to be accommodated, unless you're happy selfishly keeping it to cloistered group of nerds who are toxic towards every newcomer, and you think that's the way it should be. I've certainly met Linux people who think that way.
I only hate Musk and love Star Trek. Does that mean I’m not a true Lemmy?
Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.
I’m up to buy a new computer and I’ve never wanted a Macbook but with all the negative changes Microsoft is making I feel it is the time to make the switch.
Microsoft seems to think that we are the product and harvesting data is the default business model moving forward.
Apple is no better, they just have a better PR team.
Apple is historically better in terms of privacy than Microsoft. From resistance to government data requests to just their posture on data collection, it is an improvement. They rely less than Microsoft on advertisement and service based revenue and more on hardware sales which do not require the same level of invasive collection.
I don’t mean to sing their praises too loudly, but between the two I think Apple is a clear favorite. And couple that with a better, BSD-based, OS and I think you’ve got a winner. Unless of course you include alternate, clearly superior alternatives, like GNU/Linux.
But hardware alone? MacBooks can’t be beat.
May I interest you in Linux?
I’ve considered Linux. I work in IT and I know I could figure it out and adapt to it. The problem is my kids and my wife would also need to use it.
To give you some perspective on my decision making process. My wife (who is of the age where she really should be able to figure tech out.) can’t seem to figure out how to print from her phone and complained about how difficult IOS is compared to Android when we switched a few years ago. My kids run to me for all things tech and I usually have to figure out their problems. I’m always genuinely surprised my teenage son hasn’t made an effort to hack the application which restricts his time and access to his gaming computer (I would be secretly proud of him if he did).
So for my own piece of mind I’ll pay the 2x multiple for Apple hardware just so I don’t have to deal with learning a new OS while my family comes to me for basically every tech issue.
Microsoft
sofficial "Bing Wallpaper app"does some nasty, malware-like thingsto WindowsBREAKING: Microsoft is still shitty
Good thing normies got nothing to hide!